


Of These Furious Passions

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Capture, Gen, Physical Abuse, Prisoner of War, Search and Rescue, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky are captured by Hydra forces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of These Furious Passions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> Written for the lovely rubynye, who sent this idea to me when I opened up prompts on tumblr. <3 
> 
> I don't know that I did the original imagery justice, but here you have it <3
> 
> Title from Whitman's ['The Wound Dresser'](http://www.bartleby.com/42/818.html).

It’s much worse when the lights go out. 

They’ve been in this godforsaken bunker for three days, and Bucky’s figured that much out already, even if he can’t figure out the rest in the hazy blur that’s his head. He and Steve are way behind enemy lines, alone with some half-mad Hydra goon crowing about the Red Skull, and he has no way of knowing whether or not anyone is coming to get them.

Some losses, he knows from experience, are acceptable. The Army moves on. Bucky hopes like hell that they make an exception for Steve, even if it’s just that they’ve invested too much time and money in him, or that his whole body is one walking state secret they can’t afford to wander into Nazi control. It’s enough hope to keep him awake, quiet, stubborn, and fucking _alive_.

Steve’s in the cell next to his, reinforced because Hydra wouldn’t be what it is if they were completely inept. Steve’s ruined a few too many of their plans for them to keep from taking him seriously. But he’s where Bucky can see, and he’s doing all right. That fucking serum’s doing it’s job, and that’s all Bucky can ask for until someone gets to them.

During the day, when some small amount of gray light filters down to his cell, there are guards, at least some modicum of decency for prisoners. The camp commander comes to question him, gets nothing but Bucky’s name and serial number out of him. Bucky gets a fist to the face for his trouble, and the chance to spit blood at the man when he stalks out, trading glances with Steve. 

He’ll be back. He’s always coming back, but he never does anything as long as the sun is up and the lights are on. 

The day guards leave, trading knowing smirks when their relief arrives. Big, ugly, burly, leering down at Bucky where he’s casually chained to the damp stone. He stares back up at them defiantly. How many times has he stared down jackasses like this on Steve’s behalf before the war? How many since the war started? 

He knows their kind, and he knows what’s about to happen. The electric lights flicker, then go out, and they open Steve’s cell.

“Come on, guys,” he calls out at them, rattling his chain toward them when they turn their attention away from Steve. “You’ve been going at him for two days already. Make a guy feel unwanted.”

They pause and look at each other, then turn back from Bucky, hauling Steve to his feet. But Steve is… 

Well, he’s Steve, Bucky thinks with a faint grin when Steve turns his body, twists toward the taller of the two men, planting a hard-knuckled punch on him, right in the kisser. 

“I told you to leave him,” he shouts across the cell block, straining to see where they’re going now. All he can hear is the sound of a struggle, grunts and groans, and then the crack of fist on flesh. It comes again, and again, and Bucky winces when he sees that it’s Steve on the ground. He’s bloodied and limp, but when the two goons haul him up to his feet and drag him forward, he lifts his head an inch and mouths _I could do this all day,_ at Bucky, a trickling of blood on his lip. 

Then he twists again, fighting off their grip, but something’s wrong. Bucky’s seen Steve fight guys off bigger than this before the serum, and after, too, and this is like play fighting, like a joke, like he’s… 

Steve pulls his body right into one of the blows and one of the buckles from his uniform breaks off, skidding across the ground toward Bucky. Then he goes down, grunting in pain, and turns his face toward Bucky and _winks_. His head drops forward as he’s hauled bodily out of the room for the third night in a row. 

“We’ll come for you next,” the man calls back. “You have information. We’ll get it from you.”

The door slams closed. Bucky falls to his knees, searching the floor with his hands for the buckle. Of course. Of _course._ His fingers close around the metal and he twists it around in his hand until he finds the latch, swings it apart, feeling for the small switch. 

Agent Carter is a godsend, he thinks to himself, tapping their last known coordinates into the portable transmitter. He bites his torn lip, trying to remember the codes for the Commandos, clenching the buckle in his fist in case those goons come back. Down the hall, he can hear a yelp of pain, and tells himself it’s if it’s Steve, it’s fine, they’ll be _fine_ if he can just get this finished…

He’s gotten through the whole damn message twice before the door bangs open and another one of the Hydra goons stalks in, encircled in light from the door. Bucky stares up at him, daring him to come closer. 

“I know you,” he says in heavily accented English, and grins. “From the lab. I remember.”

Bucky closes his hand tighter around the transmitter and tips his head up, his thumb moving very slightly, tapping away. 

“Funny, all you Hydra clowns look the same to me.”

He deserves that punch, he thinks, grinning to himself when he pulls himself back to his feet, straining against the shackles they’ve got him in. Steve must have rubbed off on him sometime over twenty-some-odd years, made him reckless and daring when he should have been imparting some kind of restraint on that dumb kid. 

“Where’s Cap?” Another round of tapping out the signal. Bucky rubs his sore jaw with his free hand, ready to hit back with his fist if it keeps the transmitter out of sight long enough. 

“I am asking the questions.” The next blow catches him by surprise, sends him back into the stone wall and it takes everything he has to keep his hand closed around the transmitter.

Down the hall, there is the sound of fighting again, Steve’s shouts cutting through the din, and Bucky breathes again. He’s not there, can’t be there yet, but if Steve is still swinging, he’ll be okay. The scrappy kid from Brooklyn never did know when to give it a rest. 

Well, neither does _this_ scrappy kid from Brooklyn.

The next punch blurs Bucky’s vision, and the blow after that levels him. 

He comes out of the haze some unknowable amount of time later. Bucky is too aware of the aches, the bruises that leave a trail of clues. Bastard must have kicked the ever-loving hell out of him after he went down, but he decides that the pain is routine. He tries instead to focus his vision above him, moaning weakly when it fucking _hurts_ to blink. 

The bunker is dim, though a bit brighter here from some flickering light out in the hall. His arms are tightly strapped in place, and the sheer number of medical instruments laid out pristinely at his side would horrify him if he didn’t already know how Hydra worked. 

The transmitter is miraculously still in his hand, and Bucky immediately starts tapping again, without knowing if there’s hope that anyone will hear. There are two men by the door--the one who recognized him in the cell, and another that Bucky doesn’t know--and the base commander in the corner, making notes on a chart. 

Well, Bucky decides, he’s done torture before. He can do it again. 

He doesn’t get much further than that before a body slams into the door, then it comes crashing open and Steve comes tumbling down face-first into the floor, followed by three bullets in rapid succession. The Hydra goons by the door go down, and the base commander goes down with a bullet in his thigh. Now the door is open, Bucky can hear the sound of more gunfire, and whooping shouts in the distance.

The Howling Commandos. Right the fuck on time.

“Buck?” Steve groans bitterly, sinking to his knees. His leg’s broken, and the fool can’t even be bothered to stay off it for a few minutes and let the others be heroes for a minute. “Bucky, are you all right?”

“That’s enough, Steve.” Carter’s voice is like a cool drink of water, and Bucky cracks his eye in time to see her step out of the gloom of the hall, looking past Steve’s shoulder to Bucky. “He’s all right.”

Behind her, the chatter of gunfire echoes down the hallway, followed by the hammering of boots on the stone floors. Her eyes look between them quickly, as if she’s triaging, deciding who to go to first. 

Carter shifts her weapon onto her hip and helps Steve against the wall, then comes straight to Bucky, unbuckling the straps on his wrists with her eyes searching for his. 

“I apologize for the delay, Sergeant Barnes.” Her voice is as soft as the careful work of her hands, and she rubs feeling back into his arms when he’s free. “I couldn’t be certain of our intelligence on this base until your transmission came through.”

“You got the transmitter working, Buck?” Steve laughs quietly, dropping the dead weight of his head against the wall. “Here I thought you were just shooting off your mouth ‘cause you didn’t know better.”

“Are you ready to go back?” Carter interrupts, reaching an arm around Bucky’s shoulder and pulling him up so he can lean his weight onto her slighter frame. 

Bucky looks up at her, can barely see her through his swollen eyes, and tries for a grin.

“What are you talking about, Carter?” He chokes out, spitting a bit of blood away from her polished boots, toward the corner where the base commander is out cold. Even from this angle, he can see her mouth turn up in a rare, subdued smile.

“I could do this all day.”


End file.
